Intellectual Foundations of the Nicaraguan Revolution

by Donald C. Hodges

Overview

In this critical study of the thought of Augusto Cesar Sandino and his followers, Donald C. Hodges has discovered a coherent ideological thread and political program, which he succeeds in tracing to Mexican and Spanish sources. Sandino's strong religious inclination in combination with his anarchosyndicalist political ideology established him as a religious seer and moral reformer as well as a political thinker and is the prototype of the curious blend of Marxism and Christianity of the late twentieth-century Nicaraguan government, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780292777286
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	02/04/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	396
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Donald C. Hodges (1923–2009) was Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University, Tallahassee.

Table of Contents

• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Part One. Sandino
  • 1. The Making of a Revolutionary
    • The Mexican Experience
    • The Struggle in Nicaragua
    • Revitalizing an Ailing Cause
    • Understanding Sandino
  • 2. Activating Ideologies
    • The Legacy of Mexican Anarchism
    • Spiritualist, Freemason, Theosophist
    • The Spiritism of the Magnetic-Spiritual School
    • The Anarchism of Austere Rational Philosophy
    • Sandino’s “Rational Communism”
    • The Coming “Proletarian Explosion”
  • 3. Strategy for Subversion
    • Appeals to Patriotism
    • Sandino’s Liberalism
    • The Turn toward Populism
    • Sandino and the Comintern
  • 4. The War in Nicaragua
    • The Yankee “Machos”
    • The Bankers of Wall Street
    • The “Whited Sepulcher”
    • Nicaragua’s Political Leaders
    • The Defending Army of National Sovereignty
    • Stimson or Sandino?
• Part Two. The Sandinistas
  • 5. From Sandino to Sandinismo
    • Recovering Sandino’s Thought
    • Transmitting Sandino’s Example
    • The Marxist Influence
    • Promoting the New Marxism
    • What Is Sandinismo?
  • 6. Political Assessments
    • Nicaragua’s Neocolonial Status
    • The Rise of a Bourgeois Opposition
    • The Emergence of a Proletarian Vanguard
    • The Development of a Revolutionary Situation
  • 7. Reflections on Strategy
    • The Original “Foco” Strategy
    • The Strategy of Prolonged People’s War
    • The Strategy of Popular Resistance
    • The Strategy of General Insurrection
  • 8. Ideologies of the Revolution
    • The Cult of the New Man
    • The Defense of Human Rights
    • The Religious Policy of the FSLN
    • Ernesto Cardenal’s Tour de Force
    • The Ideological Pluralism of the FSLN
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

What People are Saying About This

John A. Booth

"[Intellectual Foundations of the Nicaraguan Revolution] is an enormously enlightening and original study. . . and should constitute a landmark work. . . on a socio-political and historical event of immense significance. . . . the book is so careful and systematic in making its case that I expect it to define a new paradigm regarding Sandino, and regarding the contribution of anarchist theorists to modern revolutionary thought and practice."